Friday, 21 March 2014

Brick Walls

Today is an important day for our startup. We are officially launching our website and releasing our product. What does it do ? In short its Indian Movie Database. You can do every possible thing you can imagine about Indian movies with our product. To list a few of them.

1) Upload an image or a video clip, and we will identify all the actors in it and all the details of the clip/image like which part of movie/show it belongs to etc.
2) You can watch any movie with subtitles in the language of your choice
3) You can type/ask any information related to Indian movies in English or any Indian language and get the answer
4) Upload a part of a song or even hum it and we will provide the song and all the details of it.

I, Veer, am the publicity manager for our company. There are three young brains behind this product. Raj, Kajol and Antony. Antony did Masters in Computer Science with specialization in Human Computer Interaction. He is responsible for all the interfaces like webpages, apps etc. Raj and Kajol did their PhDs in text and speech processing and computer vision respectively from the world's best universities in their areas. They are responsible for the backend softwares which analyze text, speech, image and video data. They are very passionate about this product and you can see them happy all the time. But, everyone faced a major "Brick Wall" in their life which changed their course of life and led them to start this company.

Raj: Raj was born in a small village in India. Theirs used to be a combined family, and he was loved by every one in the family. After three such happy years, new friend in the form of his sister entered his life. Three more years passed happily. Just like every other day, he was waiting in the evening for his father to come home, so that he can play with him. His father came home, but with a news that they are going to a nearby major city urgently, which is overnight journey, for a medical check up. After all tests, his father was diagnosed positive for cancer. His parents stayed back in the hospital for the treatment and he and his sister started living with his aunt's family in his village. His relatives were nice enough to take care of him and he being very disciplined tried not to create any problem. One day when his sister who is hardly 3 years started crying and making trouble to their relatives, he told her "Sister, aunty is kind enough to take care of us. We shouldn't create problems to her". Seriously? Can a six year old have maturity to say such words? I can hardly remember what I spoke at that age ! May be some can learn things at an age earlier than usual like Abhimanyu in Mahabharata, who learnt how to solve Padmavyuha while in his mother's womb. I always see him smiling and trying to keep everyone around him happy. Once I asked him the reason and this is what he told me. "I was a kid when my father passed away and I was not old enough to console my family. But, I realized that the only way I can keep my family happy is by being happy myself. I started sharing my happiness to everyone. Just like any other person I felt sad several times but kept it to self and cried in private." He wanted to bring good name to his family by studying hard. He wanted to develop tools which will have major impact on the society. Movies are one such medium to which every single person in India can connect to. Its the favourite entertainment for everyone irrespective of their social and economic status. That motivated him to start this company.

Kajol: She comes from a town, where she stayed with her family until she moved for her graduate studies. They had neighbours who are Hindus. Though her family members are Muslims, being neighbours, both the families became close family friends. Kajol's neighbours had a son who is of similar age to her. They both grew up together and became close friends which turned into love when they started their undergrad. Both complement each other and make a nice couple 'made for each other'. They thought that they could convince their parents. But, close family friends became rivals after knowing about their love. Neither could she convince her parents nor could she elope. Her life felt like hell and saw no meaning to it. She decided to commit suicide and thats when she met Raj and learnt about his story. She joined the company and to come out of her personal life problems she filled her mind completely with her professional life.Antony: During the final year of his undergrad Antony started a small software company in a small office with two others. Technically, he is highly talented but has no management skills. He developed an interesting software, but couldn't market it to right people at right time. Lost all his savings invested in the company and finally had to close it. As they say, failures are stepping stones to success. He learnt from his mistakes and gained greater experience. He met Raj in a conference and joined him in starting the company. He is now concentrating on his area of expertise and excelling in it.PS1: I created a company just to combine three characters and I am not working with any such company. To my knowledge there is no such product right now and might take few decades to develop such technologies for Indian Languages.

PS2: When I decided to write this post, accidentally, I was watching Randy Paush's Last Lecture video for the Nth time and felt 'Brick Walls' as the apt title. Everyone in their life faces several 'Brick Walls', for a reason. As Randy says, they are there to test you. One who breaks those walls not only finds a better human within himself, but also shows the path to others.

PS3: All the characters and stories are fictitious with slight resemblance to people I know or stories I read/heard.

13 comments:

Well written post dude. Definitely inspiring. Yes Brick Walls are part of life to break free the warrior inside us. In the modern age most people either settle down for what they have or curse the fate and just live the way it is. We find few people who break free those shackles. All the best guys.

I am just curious about the product. I like the idea but technically it is definitely challenging. Understanding human language is itself in an important stage of evolution right now. It is definitely a good market areas as Movies is next to Cricket in terms of popularity in India.

I am looking forward for the product. Do provide the link if available. I guess I read launching the website.